Happy new year all 2010 is already slipping away. Here is my first narrowband image of the Orion nebula. A lovely soft-pastely treatment with a short 30 mins of imaging.
Equipment: GRAS G-11 (AART) ASA 16 inch Astrograph with CCD FLI PL11002M Class 1 and 3nM Astrodon 50mm filters 30 Mins total of L, Ha, Sii & Oiii
A more serious image than my fun pre-christmas effort. Enjoy.
Well, as the international year of astronomy IYA2009 wraps up, I hope its been a good one for you all.
This year seems to have gone so quickly and I guess we all look back at this time of year and think about what we did, didn't do, or could have done better.
This year was ground breaking in a number of ways for me, had some unexpected frustrations, but realised the dream of getting AARTScope established. 2010 will no doubt have its own challenges and I wish everyone the best for the new year, the patience to persevere, the intuition and improvization to excell and the wisdom to pick your battles.
I leave you with the following, my final picture for this year:- A very Christmassy Orion. (Its a fun time of year.....so I have had a bit of fun with this).
One late breaking news item that managed to cut though all the media surrounding the political crisis over the Australian Government's climate change bill, was today's rocket launch in New Zealand.
Apparently New Zealand has a space program!
Launch Image - Credit: Peter Beck CEO Rocket Labs Rocket Lab a private New Zealand company launched one of its own locally designed and built rockets, into sub-orbital flight with a 22 second burn. The rocket dubbed "Manu Karere" which means "bird messenger" lifted off at 2:28pm local time from Great Mercury Island near the Coramandel's in New Zealand's north island.
Mark Rocket, director of the company, who recently became the first New Zealander to book a space tourist flight on Virgin Atlantic, was eccstatic with the launch which went perfectly to plan.
Perhaps New Zealanders have abandoned their fruitless attempts to whack the Australians in cricket and have set the bar a little higher. The slim 6 metre long rocket is designed to carry small scientific and commercial payloads, and Rocket Labs is currently reaching out to collaborators and investors for future ventures as part of the self-described "dynamic southern hemisphere space industry".
Of particular interest is the, "almost mandatory" these days, carbon footprint assessment and associated green credentials. The ATEA 2 uses only about 14kg Co2 per launch. Equally impressive is the rapid progression from test firing of the Atea 1 booster on October 1st to the launch on Nov 30, this demonstrates a nimble, small, focused operation.
The maximum payload of the ATEA 2 rocket is 70kg suitable for short duration micro-gravity and atmospheric science experiments. To achieve a maximum altitude of 250Klms the payload optimal mass is 25Kgs. Rocket Lab have developed their own hybrid rocket fuel and solid fuel binder. Hybrid 90A is a polymer-based cold castable elastomer developed in conjunction with their program by Technical Director, award winning scientist and CEO Peter Beck. Peter currently hold 5 patents in the US and Europe. Peter assures me the Kiwis will be 2-1 up when they belt Australia in the Bledisloe Cup (rugby)!
So where to from here, I for one will be following this with interest. Thanks to Mark Rocket for the images from the Rocket Lab website and Peter Beck for the exclusive launch image.
Hi, and welcome to this week's Carnival of Space – Edition 128, making a rare stopover in the Southern Hemisphere. Although I am based in Melbourne, Australia, I decided to demonstrate extra-ordinary tolerance and inclusion by actually featuring the historic Sydney Observatory in the banner, which is a bit of a collage today. The Sydney Observatory is at the southern end of the harbour bridge and Luna Park is at the northern end. A great Astronomy/Carnival link. There is a long local history of Melbourne/Sydney jokes and rivalry, so we are putting all that aside today to bring you a truly Australian edition of Carnival of Space.
If you are new here, a “Blog Carnival” is a whistle stop tour of Blogs around a particular community of interest – in this case Astronomy/Space. It features the best and most interesting highlights of this week’s articles from the contributors to the community. The purpose is to share, develop, encourage and network with those of a similar interest. (Its also traditional to blend the themes of Carnival and Space in the banner).
Before we get started, 2009 is the international year of astronomy, and sadly it has gone so quickly and there is only 53 days to go. How have you celebrated? What have you done differently to make the most of “Our Year”? Feel free to complete the following test and score your involvement in this - the international year of astronomy. (If you feel bold enough you could post your score in the comments section of the blog.
I shared my telescope & night sky with children (20 Pts) [ ] I participated in a cornerstone IYA 2009 project(20 Pts) [ ] I did a presentation on Astronomy to a group (20 Pts) [ ] I donated Galileo Scopes to a school/friends/org(20 Pts) [ ] I went to a star party (20 Pts) [ ] I logged better than 30 hours on my/a telescope (20 Pts) [ ] I participated in a research project (20 Pts) [ ] I reported Astrometric data to IAU/MPC/other (20 Pts) [ ] I reported Photometric data to AAVSO/other (20 Pts) [ ] I subscribed to a PodCast/VodCast/RSS/other (20 Pts) [ ] I wrote an article, blog, podcast or e-learning (20 Pts) [ ]
Ratings >180 – Thought Leader, >140 – Activist, >100 Enthusiast, >60 Participant, <20When’s it on again? Fear not….. there is still time for you to make it memorable!
So now I’ll get off my soap box…… its Carnival Time!!!! Enjoy! Disclaimer: If there are any real Sheldon's out there, I appologise in advance for my Big Bang Theory jokes.
In the money! Who has "lifted" the prize money in the various competitions in the race to build, or at least provide proof of concept, for a space ladder? A number of our Bloggers cover this issue off this week with exciting reports from the various competitions. This a very hot topic at the moment and I'll leave our presenters to provide commentary.
e-Astronomy pioneer Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy reviews and comments on the first Hubble image after it's recent "makeover". The stunning image of M83 stellar nursery is worth a look.
The Chandra Blog features a bio on Chandra researcher Leisa Townsley. The Chandra Mission also posted details of research on a Neutron Star that has a carbon atmosphere.
Steinn Sigurðsson from Dynamics of Cats also follows up the Chandra article and explores the implications with an interesting article - Diamond encrusted dragon's egg, perhaps Dr Who's [BBC] diamond planet Midnight is not so far fetched.
Paul from Centauri-Dreams writes about a paper by Claudio Maccone that analyzes the Sun's gravitational lens not only in terms of imaging distant planets but as a huge amplifier of radio signals.
A very relevant current topic is addressed by Cheap Astronomy beginning an epic two part podcast on Greenhouse Earth.
Steve's Astro Corner has some great suggestions for some maintenance tasks on your favorite glassware and eyepieces.
Regular contributor Stuart Atkinson from Cumbrian Sky has a great article about the naming of martian meteorites found by the Opportunity and Spirit rovers....its all a bit of a mash-up. I was also struck by the most amazing job title I have ever heard of - "Payload Uplink Lead for the Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer" I wonder how you fit that on a business card ;-).
Fun Stuff! So we begin the fun stuff with Beyond Apollo blog by David Portree and a rather interesting article about calculations for the perfect three planet manned fly-by.
Ryan Anderson departs from his usual blog at Martian Chronicles to share an article he wrote for a Science writing competition. Ryan becomes Q for a day and investigates "James Bond" like qualities of future Martian Probes. Ryan invites us to vote for his entry if we feel so inclined. [Why, wouldn't that tamper with the statistical validity of the sample voter pool? I have one thing to say - Sheldon.....its halo night!!.....now where was I?]
Robert Pearlman at the Collect Space blog "roadtests" the Space Station CRV emergency Crew return vehicle in a test with some great photos and a fascinating article.
If you're looking for a Lagrange Point to escape the pull on your space and time, Louise Riofrio, from A Babe in the Universe, does an entertainment review on Max Q a Band playing in a cafe across the road from the Johnson Space centre. Louise also explains the significance of the band's name - we love a blend of Art and Science here at AARTScope.
This past week was Halloween, and I can report that an increasing number of Australians now participate in this annual ritual. Tracy from Tiny Mantras has been having some fun with Solar System costumes in Being Jupiter for a week.
On a more serious note..... The first moving object that comes anywhere near the Hill Sphere in 2012 is going to send the conspiracy whackos looking for Google Ad revenue into a frenzy on their suddenly authoritative conspiracy sites (Someone hold up the sarcasm sign for Sheldon) ;-). Alice from AstroInfo has some great info about how to talk to your friends about 2012. With the release of the recent "action/disaster" movie, it is a good time to have that conversation with your kids and friends.
Finally returning to the Observatory theme with which I began, my own blog AARTScope features a tour of the worlds most quirky, amazing and bizarre private observatories - the roll on/off roof edition. Some of these have to be seen to be believed.
Thanks for stopping by........look out for the next episode in about a week. For the "back issues" and future info goto Universe Today - Carnival of Space.
This week I thought I would take you on a tour of some of the world’s most amazing private observatories.
When I was a little boy lying out in the backyard in a sleeping bag counting meteors and dreaming of being an Astronomer, I often pondered what it would be like to have my own observatory. We used to go on camping trips and a number of times travelled via Siding Springs in the beautiful Warrumbungle Ranges near Coonabarrabran in western New South Wales.
Most conversations with my parents and the school career guidance officer ended with the comments …….”you’re not good enough at Maths and there is only one or two astronomers in the country anyway and its not going to be you”. (This was the 70’s) The advice that I took was: “get a good job in electronics/telecommunications and then you’ll have money for your hobbies”.
Since that time I have often been bemused by the contrast between real astronomers dedicating themselves to a lifetime of study and research at great personal sacrifice versus the amateur astronomers who seem to have a limitless supply of disposable income to pour into their passion.
I think this is one of the reasons why the co-operation between amateur and professional astronomers has been so successful. Professionals sourcing research grants to secure scarce precious time on specialist instruments and self funded amateurs doing the grunt work (long hours waiting for something to happen) , follow-up observations and at times pre-work for critical missions.
Ice In Space the amateur astronomy online community even has a Spectroscopy group now, they are doing some wild stuff. I am going to do a separate blog post on this shortly.
So to the Observatories of our eccentric hobbyists, today’s selection is roll-on/ roll-off roof style of construction (I might do a separate post on Domes):
The Top Ten (My favourites) Private Observatories.
The most amazing thing about private observatories is the innovation, individual style and effort that goes into them, and the locations and beautiful settings in which they are located. Many amateurs have gone to great lengths to document the constructions and happily share their obvious skill, and even in some cases their designs and blueprints. So if you want an observatory with pneumatic chairs, pizza ovens, 7.1 surround sound, play swings or somewhere to also park your car – Take the Tour!!!!
Selection criteria: Location, design innovation, aspect, view during the day time.
2) Size does matter – The Ultimate Private Observatory
For pure engineering skill and the audacity of it all, not to mention the electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic systems, oh yes …and the F5 Tornado proof structure with 7.1 Surround Sound system.
3) Duel Function Radio and Optical Observatory – Tennessee Skynet Bill and Melinda Lord have created a unique operation leveraging both optical and radio astronomy, great to see couples sharing their interests.
Well that is quite a selection it was hard to narrow it down to 10 and I’m sure to have missed a few, feel free to add your own favorites in the comments section below and complete the poll which is better: Roll-on/off or Dome.
NB: all photos served from their original websites
For those of you reading this blog on a Laptop via wireless technology, will be interested to know that you would not have been able to do so if it wasn't for astrophysicists looking for the fingerprints of string theory in the aftermath of the big bang......ah sorry that was an episode of "Big Bang Theory".
Seriously.....in 1974 Stephen Hawking suggested that exploding mini black holes could possibly be detected by radio astronomers, so the team at CSIRO (Australian Commonwealth Science and Industry Research Organization) set about researching this over the ensuing years.
Like all good science if you ask enough questions you can end up in an entirely different place. This week Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd awarded the national science prize to Dr John O'Sullivan.
In 1992 John O'Sullivan's team developed a patent that today is the heart of the wireless protocol that ensures that the signals and channels can be separated so that more than one user can use a wireless link. [Check out the interview from Sky News.]
The significance of this event is that the Patent was upheld this week and $200M of "Licence Fees" were collected from some of the biggest technology companies, and will be secured for future use of the CSIRO to fund future research.
O'Sullivan stumbled across the discovery by attempting to remove interference so that multiple frequencies could be monitored at the same time, improving the efficiency of their research.
Well done John, congratulations, to you and all the team at the Australian National Telescope. Looks like we can look forward to further great discoveries from the CSIRO.
ICE IN SPACE
The Australian Amateur Astronomers online community "Ice In Space" has just returned from their annual "star party" camping trip. It appears they enjoyed some great weather this year and many great astrophotographs are being processed. This impressive project from one of the founders Mike Salway is quite stunning. Mike is famous/instantly recognizable for blending some terrestrial elements into his photos.
Ice In Space has over 6000 members and has made a strong contribution to Amateur Astronomy, recent contributions from its members include the discovery of Jupiter Impact and the outburst of VX For.
Their first ever publication a stunning coffee table book - 2009 IYA Compendium will be released next week - featuring 80 Stunning photographs and mini bios on the members. I leave you with my modest contribution the Swan Nebula.
Bolide Week Every since I was a kid I have been fascinated various Meteor showers. Over the years I have often pondered reports of bright bolides in October and these past two years have been no exception. Whilst the Orion meteor shower peaks on October 20/21, there have been some notable recent bolides in early october. The Piscid and Draconid showers occur around this time.
Last year on Oct 7, 2008 TC3, the first ever asteroid detected before it hit the earth, slammed into the Sudan with the flash being detected on carpark security cameras as far away as Egypt. This year on Oct 6 a similar sized object exploded in the upper atmosphere over Indonesia (Australia's nearest neighbor). Nicolas Wethington covered this extensively in Universe Today. It is either an interesting co-incidence or an aspect requiring further research that some of the brightest bolides seem to occur in the early October. Perhaps the most famous the Peekskill meteor seen by an entire football stadium of people.
Statisticslly over thousands of years there would be one at least one bolide every calendar night. So it remains an interesting aspect worthy of further research whether these Bolides are part of Piscids or Draconids shower or random small solo asteroids.
The weather has been kind this week allowing a return to varibale star observations. This week I will take a look at the discovery process for new variable stars, as this week I had reason to understand and work through it due to detecting what appears to be a new variable star that has not been previously listed.
Discoveries of variable stars are normally a specific targeted activity, from either a target list of suspected variables in a particular constellation, or by star type researching the characteristics of the variables. Teams of astronomers usually collaborate over many observing sessions to gather data and write up their findings in a science paper that is then published in one of the journals. One such paper was published only this week by Alex Golovin, Kirill Sokolovsky, Natalia Virnina, Javier Lopez Santiago - Three new Variable stars in Indus. The purpose of such papers is to provide data, classification information, star temperatures, period of variability, and assist scientists understand the behaviour, age and characteristics of these stars.
In 1844 the german astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander appealed, "I lay these hitherto sorely neglected 30 variable stars most pressingly on the heart of all lovers of the starry heavens" spawning the study of variable stars by professionals and amateurs alike. Over the past 160 years years the list has grown north of 30,000 with another 15000 suspected of being variable. Due to the massive number of variable stars and the limited number of observers, alas many still remain neglected.
Today we know there are two types of variable stars (and I don't mean one of those amusing bumper stickers - those that are and those that aren't). The two types are intrinsic and extrinsic - ie variability within the star and variablily external to the star. The stars then fall into a number of classifications related to the behaviour within these two types.
Observation and studies of variable stars are directed at identifying the characteristics to determine these classifications, and then determine the behaviours of these stars in order to better understand the context of the stars lifecycle.
The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is the current collective knowlege of stellar lifecycles, individual star types are referenced here but things get more complicated when some of these stars (of different types) orbit around each other and start interacting and exchanging their elements and debris. This can lead to very sudden changes in brightness and evidence of a catalysmic variable. [This is one example of an extrinsic variable. - EDIT Actually whilst that might sound like extrinsic behaviour its still intrinsic as in the case of Dwarf Nova the accretion disk collapses onto the star and then its brightness changes intrinsicly - Thanks Sebastion]
Image courtesy of CSIRO ATF Outreach Anyway, I am starting to sound as about exciting as a live video broadcast of the visible debris cloud in the LCROSS impact......so I'll return to my story.
One other way discoveries are made is when observers are participating in an observering campaign, and whilst processing data they find something and say ..... "hang on what going on over here". Many discoveries in all disciplines of astronomy are made when you find something a little unexpected whilst observing something else. Even amateur astronomers become curious and just have to know why!!!
This week I found myself in such a situation. Using the great photometrica tool (the poster child for "astronomy cloud services" ie photometric analysis as a webservice) I was processing data on V4743 Sgr a Cataclysmic Variable that last went into outburst in 2002. When I had finished, I hit the "what else is varying in this field" button and was presented with a list of about 40 stars to inspect. I knocked out all the stars that had a double star in the annulus, knocked out all those with a SNR less than 100 and bingo I had three left. All had brightness changes that were much larger than the standard deviation of their comparison stars (first point of interest) and demanded closer inspection. One of those had a small asteroid/or hot pixel drifting past through the annulus and across the sky background....AHHH!!! more stuff to check...... (second point to always check for transient artifacts/objects). Back to my top candidate, a Mag 14 Star, I could see a clear straight line variation of about 0.4 magnitude in just 30 minutes of imaging time (third point of interest), I quickly reviewed some other data of the same field and reprocessed all the data in a different software program - Maxim DL, and bingo! (fourth point of interest....got the same result).
So like any good AAVSO member.....contact your mentor and say "What do I do now"?
The reporting of a variable star discovery is an interesting process, one I was about to learn. Whilst an exciting event for the observer and very satisfying, its not one that leads to Hubble time and NASA press conferences. None-the-less it is scientifically interesting.
The International Variable Star Index is the body that administers this process. There is an 11 step process to enter the data required: Position, all known identifiers in the various star catalogs (2MASS & UCAC3 etc), the magnitude, the amount of variability (Max/Min Mag), variable star type, the period of its variablility, a light curve and a phase diagram. The final data point is any published jounals listing research data on your discovery(example as per Golovin, Sokolovsky, Virnina, Santiago mentioned above).
If you make a report to the variable star index all this information is vital, as to have your discovery reported and confirmed it needs to be varifiable by others, and available for peer review.....thus the onus is on the discoverer to present the data that needs to be reviewed. Over the next couple of nights I collected additional data and prepared my submission. As this was the first time I had been through the process, and being very much in the AMATEUR Astronomy camp, I was very nervous about the process. Its always important to follow the process and accept the feedback that comes from those with much more experience than one's self.
I received back a very helpful email that rejected my submission (for now) due to the fact that I didn't have enough data to produce a full phase diagram and I had suggested that it may be a Cephid Variable due to the short period and hadn't considered that it was a bit too blue to be a Cephid and that it was more likely a RR-AB. The VSX person made some very helpful suggestions about what I should do next - get some more data and produce a full phase diagram and re-submit.
As you can see from my light curve there is nowhere near enough data to create a phase diagram, as my observing runs were of short duration.
So nothing to report yet, other than there is a little variable out there throbbing away with a period of a couple of hours and varying by about 0.9M just waiting for my next visit. Once I have the period length I can then re-submit and rally some other observers for follow up. Again, the most important learning has been that the the period is important as others need to know what to look for, so they can plan their observing campaign.
So in the spirit of Argelander's appeal, at 9pm tonight, I will return and ensure my little variable doesn't end up on a list of "hitherto sorely neglected" variable stars.
UPDATE: 16/10 Still chasing data, missed a couple of nights due to bad weather and now my little star is escaping into the western sky. Here is the Phase Plot I referred to....as you can see this is still a bit out and I need a lot more data. At least you can see what I need here, to calculate the period.
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